Ten of Swords
by Empatheia
Summary: [Kurogane, Fye] Ruin. A destroyed city, with a peaceful sky. Six flavours of silence.Taking back Suwa is harder than expected, for an unexpected reason.


**A/N: **Originally for a drabble challenge on my journal, this one got a mind of its own and took off to become... this. The prompt was Kurogane/Fye, 'taking back Suwa,' prompted by **Quillslinger**. I hope you enjoy it. :)

-Eia

**xxxxxx**

_**Ten of Swords**_

**xxxxxx**

_ten of swords__: Ruin. 29, the Abysmal. A destroyed city is a symbol of the modern world bringing its own destruction... _

_but the clear sky shows a return to spiritual truths. _

_The tips of the swords are broken._

Whatever he had been expecting, this wasn't it.

The silence was palpable, like a thick white blanket pressing into his face, stifling his breath and swallowing his voice. The snow absorbed what little sound was left, until he wondered despite himself if he had actually lost the ability to hear entirely.

What had he expected?

Not a bustling, freshly reborn civilization, to be sure-- that would have been asking too much, and Kurogane was not a selfish person. All he'd really wanted was to see signs of rebuilding, to know that his homeland was picking itself up out of the ashes and trying to walk forward, even one step at a time.

That was what he had hoped for, and expected, and it was exactly what was not here.

All there was here was silence, and snow, and worn charred-black ruins that no longer remembered what being a home felt like.

"Kurogane," said Fye, his voice quiet and too close to sympathetic for comfort.

He shook his head and looked around one more time at the painfully quiet forest wasteland, as if he somehow thought all this was just a vision brought on by his fear and apprehension and would disappear any moment now to reveal the awkward, gangly phoenix rising of Suwa's heart.

He shut his eyes, and opened them again. The ashes and snow remained.

"Fye," he said in an eerie parody of calm composure, "where is everyone?"

"Time passes differently in every world," Fye said sadly, as if that was any kind of answer. "This could be the winter after you left, or, more likely by the looks of things, decades have passed. The restoration attempt was made-- see, there are the tools, lying near that corner, see?-- but abandoned for some reason we have no way of knowing about."

"I need to know what happened," Kurogane said, hand tight on the hilt of his sword and muscles tension-taut.

Fye --who always knew exactly what to do to avert disaster-- smiled lightly, one good remaining eye crinkling along well-worn lines of good humour. "All right then, where to?"

The world in Kurogane's eyes slowly irised inwards until it encased little more than the clearing they stood in and a small patch of sky overhead. He did not know this land, any more than it knew him. "I... don't know," he admitted, closing his eyes to shut out the blinding whiteness of the snow. "If this is gone, then I don't know what else will still be standing."

"Which way was the capital then?" Fye pressed gently.

Kurogane lifted his arm and pointed westwards, towards the sinking sun. "There."

"Well then, shall we go?" Fye reached out and curled his arm around Kurogane's, then began to walk patiently towards the direction indicated.

Kurogane let Fye pull him, feeling his legs like melting ice, unable to move on their own. Fye's hand was cold on his upper arm, but he felt somewhat warmer nonetheless and wondered if Fye was using magic again, the subtle sort he was so good at. Either way, he was thankful. Despite the fact that he had grown up here, where the winters were long and the springs tumultous, it had been a long time since he'd been here and he was no longer accustomed to it.

The longer they walked, the warmer he got, and the surer he became that it was not simply due to physical exertion.

"Stop that," he said, more gently than he'd meant to. "I don't need your pity."

"What pity?" Fye answered softly with a familiar smile. "I honestly haven't a clue what you're talking about." His blind, bandaged eye faced Kurogane, unreadable and blank.

Kurogane could not think of an answer to that, at least not one he could live with on his conscience, and so he said nothing and kept walking. Foot out and down, transfer weight, next foot, transfer weight. It was harder than it sounded, harder than it should have been. He didn't _feel _ like he was in shock, but the symptoms were all there.

It stung, a bit, because he'd thought himself to be a stronger person than _this, _laid out flat by the sight of his abandoned home as though someone had clotheslined him with an iron bar. It was too close to pathetic for comfort.

One foot out, down, transfer weight. Next foot.

xxxxxx

When they stopped for the night, it was very far into the night, but still bright because of the ambient glow of moonbeams reflecting on snow. They could probably have kept walking if they had wanted to.

Kurogane wasn't at all sure he wanted to get there, though, and so in a way he did not want to keep walking.

So they stopped, and built a fire, and for two hours pretended as best they could to be asleep. They were good at it. Warriors tend to be.

They didn't fool each other in the slightest.

"Kurogane," Fye said at last, a few moments after the moon finished setting. "Are you cold?"

_Yes,_ he almost said, but swallowed it. Pride, and all that. "No."

Fye, as usual, heard the real answer rather than the audible one and went with that. It was too dark to see much, but the feel of a delicate, tall frame stretching out along his side was fairly unmistakeable and familiar. A thin arm stretched across his abdomen to curl against his side, and a warm face nestled into the niche between his chin and his shoulder.

"Better?" Fye asked.

Though he hated to admit it, it _was _better. Fye's body was not very warm, but his unconscious magic was, and within minutes Kurogane had to struggle to stay awake. He was so comfortable, and the rhythmic pattern of Fye's breath against his neck was lulling.

Just as he slipped resignedly over the edge into the dark of sleep, he felt Fye smile and heard him say "Good night, Kurogane."

It still, even after all this time, sounded terribly, beautifully wrong to hear his proper name from that mouth.

_Good night, Kuropin, _the Fye in his memory said with a mocking grin.

Sometimes he missed that Fye, but not tonight.

xxxxxxx

They reached the capital the next day near sundown, after a long day and long night of saying nothing to each other.

It wasn't an uncomfortable silence, persay, just a necessary one. Kurogane didn't want to talk, and Fye proved to be as good at not talking as he was at most everything else.

Until they reached the capital, or at least what was left of it.

A low sound rumbled out of Kurogane's throat, half-suppressed but too strong and anguished to be totally silenced. It was the sound a wounded dragon would make with the spear twisting in its side.

The capital had been mostly built of wood. That meant that the majority of the capital no longer existed, except as jagged logs and boards jutting haphazardly from the snow. Here and there, lone sentinels of a city no longer in need of guarding, forlorn and wind-weathered stone temples dotted the valley.

There was no living thing to be seen anywhere, at least not any that breathed and walked. He did not count the trees.

Not a bird, not a rabbit, and most painfully, not a human being in sight.

He felt like a man who had written down the date of a very important engagement wrong and missed it, coming in the next day to find only scattered remnants of a grand celebration. He felt as though he'd been climbing stairs and expected there to be one more than there actually was, and come down jarringly on the wrong foot through an unexpectly empty space.

He felt lost, off-balance. He wanted out.

"Fye," he said, and prided himself that his voice hardly trembled at all. "Get me out of here."

Predictably, Fye hesitated. "Are you sure?" he asked gently, laying a hand on Kurogane's arm. "If you're the only left, then Suwa belongs to you, does it not? Can you abandon it so easily?"

Kurogane took a deep breath of cold wind and shook his head. "This is not Suwa," he said with complete certainty. "I have already taken back the only Suwa that mattered. We can go now."

Fye continued to waver, his one eye fixed on Kurogane's left and his mouth slanted doubtfully downwards.

Kurogane shut his eyes, unable to bear the sight of the horribly silent empty space between the mountains any more. "_Please."_

He felt more than heard the vibrations of Fye letting a slow breath out. Then there was a fickle, delicate hand in his large, callused swordsman's hand, and a moment later the world spiraled wrenchingly into his navel.

In the middle of everything and nothing, he felt Fye's capricious blue spirit curl around him, a silent comfort he hadn't the heart nor the will to refuse. It was hard to tell time when they spent their time constantly traveling between worlds where time ran differently, but he thought it must have been years now that they had been companions, endless months and days and hours that Fye had been unfailingly beside him.

Then again, it may have only been a little while. It was impossible to tell for sure.

In any case, though he would never say it in words that ears could hear, Fye being present made the silence more bearable, and that was something of value to Kurogane.

He felt the blue-Fye-spirit touch him warningly, and braced himself. The world exploded out of him, twisting ferociously into being under his feet and around his skin.

It became apparent very, very quickly that something was wrong.

"Interesting," Fye said, and he sounded more than a little bemused.

Kurogane couldn't breathe.

A quiet meadow, patched here and there with soil-ridden melting snow. Then trees to frame it with dark but not forbidding fences, and above a sky that was blue like no other sky in all the universe. Also, a smell on the air of dying things and growing things and cycles continuing on their paths as they should.

Suwa, in the springtime.

A choked laugh, like a bursting bubble, from Kurogane.

An amused smile from Fye.

"It seems that you may be done with Suwa, but Suwa is not done with you," said Fye, biting his lip to surpress his grin.

Kurogane threw his hands up in the air. "What do you want from me?" he asked despairingly.

"I think I can guess," Fye said, sliding and arm around his waist and pressing his head forehead to Kurogane's shoulder. "She wants you to rebuild her, make her live again. Isn't that what you want, too?"

It was hard to run from truth with Fye standing there holding him down, so Kurogane gave up and thought about it seriously. What did he want? What did he want for Suwa, and for himself? The answer was predictable-- just as Fye had said, he wanted her to live again, and then he wanted to live there for the rest of his life and never cross the boundary between worlds again.

"How can I?" he asked finally. "There are no people here. How can I rebuild an empty country?"

It was impossible. There was no way.

Fye, however, only smiled wider. Kurogane instantly regretted using the word 'impossible.' It was Fye, and thus it was fundamentally unwise to rule any possibility out. Fye had a habit of doing the impossible six times before lunchtime, so even this shouldn't truly be a stretch.

"We'll bring them," he said brightly. "From the far corners of this world, if they still live, or from other worlds if they don't. If you decide to do it, we can make it happen without a doubt. You're always underestimating yourself, Kurogane, and probably underestimating me too. If you want your world to live, then we will make it so. It's up to you."

Kurogane, instead of looking down to meet Fye's earnest eyes, looked around at the desolate emptiness of the place he loved most in all the worlds. Then he imagined it bustling again, with bright busy towns and gentle roads through the woods and people between them, smiling and frowning and weeping and laughing as humans always do.

"What the hell," he said. "I have nothing better to do."

Fye's arm, still around his middle, tightened. "Well then, in that case..." said his muffled voice into Kurogane's chest, "I suppose we have some work ahead of us."

"You're staying?" Kurogane asked, suddenly terrified of the answer.

"Of course," Fye replied with a half-laugh, "you wouldn't get very far without me, now would you?"

This was true, and embarassing. Kurogane could hardly cross worlds on his own, and certainly couldn't bring anyone back. He needed Fye for this, and was suddenly more grateful than he could say that he was staying. It would have been a lonely quest without his only constant companion, the only one who had never left.

Since he was terrible at saying thank you, to anyone, he put his arms around Fye's shoulders and tightened them until he was sure he felt the magician's ribs creak. He couldn't possibly say it more clearly than this.

_Thank you for staying_, it said. _Thank you for every time you stayed when you could have gone. Thank you for every time you didn't die. _

Fye's hand curled up to the back of his head, and pulled it down to his level. Then he pressed a quiet, gentle, and entirely sacred kiss to the metal forehead protector Kurogane still wore. Heat seared through it, probably accidental but terribly effective nonetheless. "Blessings be," he murmured.

Kurogane felt the sudden warmth like a spell, curling through his veins. That was Fye's version of _you're welcome_, and damned if it didn't beat every other version ever invented.

Fye stepped back and smiled brilliantly up at him. "Well then. Shall we get to work?"

xxxxxx

A wind blew through a deserted valley that had once held a great city and now held only crumbling ruins, grown over with sweet wild greenery.

This wind knew nothing of the sorrow of the winds which had come before it. All it saw was a world rising from the ashes of its death, and so naturally, it was a glad wind.

Suwa was risen.

**XxxxxxxxX**

**A/N: **It's amusing to me how in my mind, this pairing is almost unbearably sexy and full of smutty potential. And yet, when I write it, it becomes almost-gen!fic, with not so much as a kiss. My brain never ceases to entertain me.


End file.
